Anna Spark - The House of Sacrifice

I weep. Marith weeps and howls. We cannot make any human sound.

But admit it: somewhere, deep down, you think that we deserve this. You believe we deserve this.

Tobias the bastard-hard sellsword failed fucking assassin waste of bloody space

The camp of the Army of Amrath, the scourge of the world, the conquerors, the bloodletters, the plague-bringers, the despoilers of all that lives, somehow in some complicated way kind of his friends

‘More porridge? It’s calling your names, lads …’

‘It’s calling out for something, certainly.’

‘So put it out of its misery and finish it, won’t you?’

‘Its misery? What about my misery having to eat it?’

‘Mercy, mercy, I’ll do anything, mercy! Just don’t offer me any more of that porridge, please!’

‘I’ll have another bowl, if it’s going.’

‘Ah, gods, hear that? Clews wants another bowl. Make sure you’re marching well upwind, yeah?’

‘Better out than in, man. Better out than in.’

‘That goes for the porridge, too.’

‘Piss off, man. You want to be the cook, you can be the bloody cook.’

‘That was my damned bag you just dripped porridge on!’

A troop of fresh new soldier boys finishing up their breakfast, their armour so new and shiny, their faces so young and ardent; it was positively freakish, to see them beside the old hands.

Tobias sat and watched them for a bit. Kind of pleasure/pain in it. Like probing a wound with a fingernail. Seemed to be becoming more and more of a masochist in his old age.

Regrets? I’ve had a few. But if I could fix one moment in all my life … Warp and weft of it, backwards and forwards, some company of an evening, two hot meals a day, the odd barrel of strong drink. Him and Geth and Skie, the lads with their innocent killer’s faces, playing dice and arguing and ignoring him and Geth and Skie when they ordered them to stop arsing around and polish their kit and then get some sleep. The Free Company of the Sword, a troop of bastard-hard sellswords and lonely blokes with no other job prospects. An old name, if not a famous one. Well-known in certain select political circles. Specialized in stabbing people in the back. Skie the commander-in-chief, thinker, broker, scariest hardest hardman Tobias had ever met. Tobias and Geth the squad commanders, hard-bitten, respected, maybe even kind of father figures to the squad boys, certainly both agreed they felt guilty when they stabbed the squad boys in the back. To be fair to Tobias, the clients did pay a lot more if the job included stabbing the squad boys in the back. ‘It’s good here,’ one of the squad boys had said to him, ‘don’t you think?’

Recruited some new boys. And one of them was Marith pissing Altrersyr may his godsdamned kingly dick rot off with pox. Decided it would be a great idea to stab Skie and Geth in the back and strike out on his own, Commander-in-Chief Tobias, build up a new troop around him, be his own man, do his own thing. Or just retire, drink beer, find himself a woman, keep her well enough she’d grit her teeth and ignore him getting fat and sweaty and farting all night.

Yes. Well. The best laid plans and all that, if ifs and buts were pots and pans, etc etc to the bitter clichéd end. Think it would be fair to say things didn’t entirely go quite to plan there, yup.

Four years, Tobias the bastard-hard sellsword had been floating around following in the Army of Amrath’s wake. His leg hurt where he’d once jumped out of a bloody window. His arm hurt, where Marith shitting Altrersyr had once stabbed him. His ribs hurt, his knees hurt, his frigging arse somehow hurt, hair was grey and thinning, his gut hung over his belt-buckle and he did indeed fart all night. ‘We can kill him, we can stop him, we can … we can do something. Right?’ And lonely. One man, stumbling along.

There had been others, once: Raeta, Landra. Friends. Raeta was … not human. Antlers. Claws. Wings. Green leaves, wet earth. Life god wild god thing. ‘ I am his death, Tobias ,’ Raeta had whispered. ‘ I am his death, I will follow him and follow him, I will destroy him .’ Raeta the life god was four years dead. Landra Relast had finally fucked off two years back. ‘We have to destroy him, we have to kill him, I will find a way to destroy him, I will, I swear it.’ She had sounded the voice of reason. But there had been something in her face that made him glad, still, that she had gone off alone. Her eyes were like a wild dog’s eyes. Running her hands over a knife blade, whispering her father’s name and her brother’s name, promising them vengeance. Sometimes thought of her and shivered, right down inside his manhood. Raeta … Landra … Gods and monsters … ‘ It’s worse than he is ,’ Landra had cried out once, before Raeta died. And he might almost understand that, thinking of Raeta’s eyes, dying. Thinking of Landra’s eyes in the last days before she left him. ‘Kill him. Kill him.’ Grinding her teeth whispering it in her sleep. Wild dog’s eyes, wild dog’s moaning howling, ‘We have to kill him.’ So bloody empty, she’d looked. ‘I will be his death, Tobias. I will end this. I will stop him.’ Thank the gods he himself was old and sore and ached.

Gods. Shivered now. Anyway. They’re gone, like rainfall. Don’t think of them. Four years, Tobias the bastard-hard sellsword been floating around old and sore and farting, marching up and down behind the army. ‘I’ll think of something, right? Okay?’ I’m not complicit in this shit that’s happening here. I’m a hero, me. I’m following him around because one day, one day, when he’s old and sick and abandoned and ruined and his army’s left him and he’s nothing, I’ll still fuck up and fail to kill him. If Landra’s a wild dog, I’m just a fucking dog too. I’m walking here in the darkness in his footsteps forever. Following him because there’s nothing else. This is all there is of the world. The fire burning hot and light and there is no heat and there is no light. I can’t kill him. Terrified to even think of killing him. But I’m alive. Just about.

‘Gods and demons, look at that, Clews has finished the whole of his second bowl.’

‘Clews, man, your insides must be made of bronze.’

‘Iron, Turney, mate. My insides are made of iron.’

‘So … your insides are rusting away, then? That would explain a lot.’

‘Petros, mate, you see this empty bowl …?’

‘I see it, Clews. I’m thinking of giving you a special medal, in fact, for emptying it.’

‘Oh yeah? Oh yeah?’ The whole company turned to Clews, who in turn turned to Turney. Ooooh. There going to be a fight?

They were getting bored. Arrived ready and eager, ‘March like all hells, lads, no slacking now, got a war to fight,’ halfway across the whole of Irlast, ‘you’ll be men, soon, laddies, real men, you just need to bloody get there,’ and now they were waiting around in a mountain valley in the middle of nowhere, five days now just sitting here, no slaughter no looting no torture no rape. Okay, so Sunreturn had been fun and games, if a bit weird here in the south, they could use a day afterwards to rest, yes, but now it was over lads like these needed to get on. The latrine trenches were filled to overflowing, apart from anything else.

Rumour going round that the queen was ill. That was why they were hanging around. Obvious what ‘ill’ means, in a pregnant woman. Nobody dared say it. But.

Don’t. Just don’t.

The lads’ squad commander turned up, bawled at them to get themselves sorted out, they were marching in an hour or so, look at the bloody state of them, thought he’d told them twice already to polish their bloody kit. The lads shuffled up grumbling, faffing around in time-honoured fashion with random bits of stuff.